I won't accuse him of stealing, though. If I did that, I would have to accuse EVERY Japanese samurai film maker of stealing from each other. The idea of a genre is that YOU ARE taking ideas from every other person making films in that genre. It's like open software. You take stuff from the genre, then you put stuff back into the genre. Everyone wins. (Yeah! The creative commons!)
I will say that Lucas was smart in dropping the whole giant monster angle.
No. Forget that. The Death Star was the giant monster.